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How a new restaurant is serving God’s love and second chances in Baltimore’s Little Italy

Father Leo Patalinghug works in the kitchen of his Baltimore restaurant, The Gastro Social. (Photo by Matthew Lommano)

This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.

If you want to find God, seek him even among the pots and pans, St. Teresa of Ávila once said. That’s also where I happen to find Father Leo.

Father Leo Patalinghug rushes from the direction of the kitchen to greet me when I first enter The Gastro Social, his new restaurant nestled in a charming Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood called Little Italy. The 54-year-old Catholic priest — an award-winning chef — appears in a black chef coat embroidered with his name in white: “Chef Fr. Leo.”

We meet before the restaurant opens for the evening on a sunny, October day. Within the three-story brick building, the sunset illuminates the restaurant’s white walls, hardwood floors and high ceiling that give it an open, airy feeling. Red-cushioned chairs and colorful drapery accentuate the space that seats 75. It feels sleek and modern, but, at the same time, quaint and intimate. Father Leo treats me as his guest, with the restaurant as his home.

“Can I offer you a drink?” he wants to know. “How’s the temperature?”

I quickly realize that his warm welcome and hospitality are the norm. As patrons begin to trickle in, he extends a heartfelt greeting to every person who enters. He knows some of them; all of them know him.

Father Leo is something of a celebrity in Catholic circles. Born in the Philippines and raised in Baltimore City, he is a priest-member of a community of consecrated life called Voluntas Dei (“The Will of God”). His cooking captured national attention after he won a competition against a world-famous chef on the Food Network show, “Throwdown! with Bobby Flay,” in 2009.

Today, he serves as founder of Plating Grace, an international food and faith movement, and The Table Foundation, a nonprofit that harnesses the power of food to unite communities. When he’s not writing books about the theology of food or hosting the EWTN show “Savoring Our Faith,” he’s traveling nationally and internationally to speak and to lead pilgrimages. He squeezes me into his schedule, between speaking engagements in Sheridan, Montana, and Round Rock, Texas.

His latest endeavor, The Gastro Social, is an expansion of his food truck, Plating Grace & Grub, he tells me. He began the food truck, which serves international comfort food, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The truck embodies mission: Father Leo hires employees who need a second chance or a helping hand, ranging from people who were formerly incarcerated to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And when the truck isn’t booked for an event, it’s delivering food to the local homeless and hungry.

“I have the worst business plan,” Father Leo says. Even when there aren’t events, “I keep my staff employed and we give our food away.”

But instead of changing his business plan, he tells me that he’s embracing it.

“If Jesus knocks, if you open, he will enter and he will have supper with you,” he says, referring to Revelation 3:20. “I am not in charge of who knocks, but I am in charge of whether or not I open the door — and I firmly believe that everything that I’m doing is because Christ is knocking.”

When I commend Father Leo for continuing to say “yes” to God’s knock as his responsibilities grow, he tells me, honestly, that sometimes his response is more like an “Are you serious?”

A taste of Catholicity

We’re on the main floor that houses a kitchen, bar and dining area with a stairway leading upstairs to additional seating on an indoor balcony and outdoor patio. As we sit across from each other at a wooden table, Father Leo shares his love of St. Teresa of Ávila, calling her a “big foodie.”

I look around and notice little nods to Catholicism next to the host stand, from a painted statue of St. Paschal, the patron saint of cooks, to a candle with the image of Divine Mercy. A sign hanging from the ceiling points guests upstairs to “THE UPPER ROOM: TASTE & SEE” on one side, and reads “OUR MISSION: FEED PEOPLE’S MIND, BODY, AND SOUL” on the other.

“We don’t want to make this so overtly Catholic that people think that you’re walking into a church, because you’re not,” Father Leo says, reflecting on the restaurant’s grand opening in August. “But what makes it cool is that it’s not just about food for the body.”

He tells me more about the restaurant’s mission, saying, “I think all of our saints tell us that you can give people the ‘presence’ of Christ without giving them the Eucharist. You can give them a bowl of soup. You can give them a glass of water.”

I think of the glass of water he handed me at the beginning of our conversation. Father Leo describes a kind of circular participation in God’s love available to us through food. In sharing food, we can share God. In serving others, we can serve God. He cites Matthew 25:40, in which Jesus says, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

If there is a language that the Church might use more effectively, Father Leo says, it’s the language of food, the language of hunger, the language of hospitality and service. Jesus was fluent here.

Restaurant patrons enjoy their food at The Gastro Social. (Photo by Matthew Lommano)

“All of these things are wrapped together in what Christ demonstrated at the Last Supper, when he put on his apron, and then he gave [his disciples] the Eucharist,” he says, referring to Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity present under the appearances of bread and wine.

The institution of the Eucharist appears in all four Gospels. I reread them after speaking with Father Leo. In each one, Jesus gives himself as food and drink. In John 6:53, he says explicitly, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Before the Eucharist, Jesus also feeds people in physical need, Father Leo tells me. This is a point Pope Francis later makes in his 2024 encyclical, Dilexit nos (“He loved us”), where he writes that “Jesus was not indifferent to the daily cares and concerns of people, such as their weariness or hunger.” Father Leo appreciates the significance of responding not only to physical hunger, as a chef, but also to spiritual hunger, as a priest. And sometimes, it seems, the two overlap.

‘Traveling with your taste buds’

Opening a restaurant was never Father Leo’s intention, he tells me. The Gastro Social’s selection of international cuisine complements the historic Italian-American neighborhood that surrounds it. The menu, where customers can enjoy any main dish for less than $20, includes Italian offerings, from “Plentiful Penne,” as an entrée, to “Frutti di Bosco Homemade Ice Cream,” for dessert.

“It’s comfort flavors,” Father Leo says, that draw inspiration from around the world. “We allow you to travel with your taste buds.”

The Little Italy community in the heart of downtown Baltimore takes only five minutes to walk through, but it bursts with personality. Italian flags wave hello. Strung lights float above the intersections, and painted messages on the pavement wish visitors “Benvenuti PICCOLA ITALIA” (“Welcome to Little Italy”). Two- to three-story restaurants, offices and homes snuggle together, separated only by sidewalks and narrow streets. Statues of Mary peek through the windows. Benches invite passers-by to rest. In the middle of it all, a Catholic church, established in 1881, rises up. Its name just happens to be “St. Leo the Great.”

The more I speak with Father Leo, the more I hear about these little coincidences. He says he was looking for a commissary, or a kitchen location for the food truck, when — by chance — he met the owner of the building where the restaurant is now located through mutual friends. He thought maybe he could afford to rent just the kitchen. The owner told him to also use the dining area.

“So we created this space, which is really a gastronomy social space,” he describes The Gastro Social, with “gastronomy” or “gastro” standing for the study of food and “social” representing a place where food brings people together.

Just like his food truck, Father Leo sees this as more than a location that serves food. He has plans to hire a director of mission whom he hopes will expand their activities to include everything from teaching at-risk youth to serving as a center for people seeking culinary training to get their certification.

The Gastro Social will host cooking classes and wine tastings, private dinner events and demos showcasing various chefs. The very first cooking class — on soups — takes place the evening of our conversation.

Sharing meals, changing lives

With the restaurant, Father Leo can also provide a kind of stability for his staff that he couldn’t with the food truck, which operates on a seasonal schedule and relies on scheduled events.

After managing the food truck, he realized that “if we want to take seriously the formation of our staff, we have to find a place where they can come to regularly.”

Father Leo takes this seriously because The Gastro Social, like the food truck, hires people who need a second chance or a helping hand. I ask him about witnessing employees’ lives change when they have the opportunity to work with him. He tells me, honestly, that some haven’t. He estimates that 40% of these hires are successful, with 60% not being so successful. But, he adds, that doesn’t stop him from trying.

Father Leo smiles as he tells me about the transformation of one former employee. He remembers once driving this employee home and passing three prison sites along the way. This man had spent time in each one.

Together they delivered food to the local homeless. In Baltimore, homelessness is common: According to the City of Baltimore’s Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services, roughly 1,600 men, women and children are homeless in Baltimore City on any given night. A 2023 report by The Brookings Institution, a research nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., ranked Baltimore 15th highest in the prevalence of homelessness in a list of 48 major cities, with 280 homeless per 100,000 capita.

One day, Father Leo asked this employee to offer food to a few guys sitting under a nearby tree. This man carried food over to them, but they refused it.

“They almost didn’t trust him,” Father Leo tells the story. “Then he commented, saying that it came from me, pointing to me in the truck.”

The men finally took the food, ate it, and chatted with the employee for a bit.

“As he came back, he had a really goofy smile on his face,” Father Leo remembers. “I asked him, ‘What are you smiling about?’ And he said, ‘I’d never given food to anyone before.'”

The employee told Father Leo that the experience made him feel “wonderful.” Father Leo had never once heard him use that word — or any other like it — before.

Father Leo works to give hope to employees like these. He guides them in the four areas of formation, which he lists as intellectual, spiritual, personal and pastoral. First, he focuses on someone’s ability to work and teaches them to cook. After that, he starts on other skills like listening or communication. Next comes personal formation, from “how are you dressed?” to “how do you come across?” Employees also talk to Father Leo about God.

“I don’t have a religion class for them because some of them aren’t even Catholic or Christian,” he says. “But I’m hoping that, now that we have this place, and with the right staff, we can do more of that.”

Father Leo’s story

I ask Father Leo what makes the biggest difference in employees’ lives while giving them a second chance or a helping hand. His answer surprises me, but maybe it shouldn’t: “Being honest with them,” he says, “because that is connected to seeing their inherent dignity.”

This is a gift Father Leo shares not only with his employees but also with me. He says of the restaurant that it was never his intention to be committed to something so physically demanding. It’s hard to start any business, he says, but restaurants are the worst because of inflation, the hours, the physical and emotional demands, the dissatisfaction of customers and the difficulty in finding people to hire, including those who need a second chance or a helping hand. Then there’s the need for financial support. Right now, Father Leo says, he’s putting his own money into this mission.

When I ask what keeps him going, he responds with “naps.” And “prayer, the encouragement of family and friends, seeing the benefit that this provides,” he adds.

I want to know more about what drives him, and so I ask Father Leo for his story. He grew up in the kitchen, he says, with his mother, a home economics teacher, teaching him the basics.

“As the youngest, I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen,” he remembers. “I was wrapping and rolling egg rolls, I was helping to whip the batter for the cake, I was stirring this, I was sweeping the floor, I was washing dishes.”

As a kid, he didn’t enjoy going to Mass. But an explanation of the Mass is what led him to become a priest. He tells me that, when he was a teenager, a priest gave a mission at his church that changed his life.

Father Leo prepares a dish in his kitchen at The Gastro Social. (Photo by Matthew Lommano)

“He taught the Mass and was so impactful that when he lifted up the host, I encountered God and it … literally made me fall back into my chair,” he says. “I just was so overwhelmed by the presence of Christ in the Eucharist that I started to take it more seriously.”

He entered seminary and studied at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he continued to cook. He participated in their tradition of a family meal and he threw dinner parties.

“It was just such a relief and a form of recreation to go to the markets after classes and find what I’m going to cook,” he recalls. “What we all looked forward to, was on our free night to have a meal as a family. That’s where these seminarians became my brothers.”

In his free time, he took cooking courses and befriended restaurateurs. Even after seminary, he returned to Italy for extensive cooking classes.

Father Leo celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ordination last summer. He tells me that when he was ordained — long before he imagined being a chef — he placed a quote from John 21 on his ordination card. It was the question: “Do you love me?” It’s a question that Jesus asks his apostle Peter three times. Each time, Peter responds yes, and Jesus commands him to “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and, finally, “Feed my sheep.”

Serving hope

Father Leo talks about the relationship between feeding people as a priest and as a chef. He later suggests that both priests and chefs serve hope. Pointing first to the Eucharist, he says that God gives us hope through food.

“It is abundantly clear that the source of our hope is a seemingly piece of bread and a drop of wine,” he says.

His words echo Pope St. John Paul II, who writes in his 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (“Church of the Eucharist”), that “In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Christ walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope.”

Even on a physical level, a meager crumb gives hope to the hungry, Father Leo says. He tells me the story of Elijah, who asks God to take his life and, instead, God commands him to eat. Father Leo also describes Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, where the bride and groom are hopeless until Jesus turns water into wine.

Father Leo draws from a wealth of Scripture. I check later and discover that food is woven throughout the Bible. It includes the word “eat” more than 600 times and “food” and “drink” more than 300 times each.

“To suggest that food is not the source of hope,” Father Leo says, “would be to deny our humanity.”

I ask Father Leo to share simple tips for how everyday Catholics can share God’s love through food and hospitality. He immediately lists three. First, he says, limit the number of times you eat alone. Eat with family, eat with friends, eat with someone you don’t like. The goal, he says, is to extend that communion of persons from the altar to the dinner table.

Next, people should consider how they feed themselves by asking themselves questions from “What do you put in you?” to “What do you hunger for?” I remember Father Leo telling me earlier that our belly button is an “indelible mark” that shows that we are hungry for something.

And last, he urges everyone — especially those in the Baltimore-metro area — to visit The Gastro Social. For those who can’t, Father Leo hopes that they consider supporting his ministry financially.

A cooking lesson

As we wrap up our conversation, Father Leo invites me to participate in the evening’s cooking class. I watch the quiet restaurant come to life. The lights turn on, relaxed music dances through the speakers, wine glasses clink, people speak in anticipation and excitement.

Nearly a dozen people pull up chairs around Father Leo’s cooking station set up at the front of the restaurant. Father Leo jumps right in; he’s in his element. As he grates carrots and dices onions for the first soup of the evening, a flavorful Italian wedding soup, I witness firsthand his expertise in chopping, slicing and stirring all while sharing stories, cracking jokes and making sure “are you all having fun?”

“Yes!” everyone responds emphatically.

Father Leo laughs greets and laughs alongside his customers at The Gastro Social. (Photo by Matthew Lommano)

Aromas fill the air, accompanied by the sound of laughter, conversation, pots and pans. Father Leo goes on to create a butternut squash soup and invites participants to help shred the squash. Next comes a hearty arroz caldo (“rice broth”) soup, a nod to his Filipino heritage.

As we taste each one, I realize that Father Leo isn’t the only one who is energized. The attendees are, too. They tell stories about their parishes and traveling to the recent National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana. The sharing of food has become the sharing of faith and friendship. Everything that has to do with food is inspired by God, I remember Father Leo telling me earlier.

“Who gets ordained to be sautéing onions?” he asked. “It just makes no sense. But then when you look at it, it makes perfect sense.”

And somehow, it does.

Father Leo makes himself available until the last person leaves. Then, he disappears into the kitchen once more, back to the pots and pans.